


The Things We Did and Didn't Do

by waketosleep



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rachel and I were just so bad for each other. Not compatible at all outside the bedroom, although we did actually like each other as people. Mostly. We'd have made awesome fuckbuddies."</p><p>Danny reveals the heart of his issues with Rachel, and Steve develops a complex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things We Did and Didn't Do

**Author's Note:**

> Follows up on 1x08, where we met Rachel, although the time period is unspecified.

"Yes, dear," said Danny, rolling his eyes. "Yes. _Yes_ , mother of my child, darling dearest." He paused. "We were together eight years and made a kid, _that's_ what gives me the right."

Steve smirked and shoulder-checked before merging.

"Give me a break," sighed Danny as he hung up. He lifted his hips to stuff his phone back in his pocket and Steve did his best not to watch.

"So how's that 'getting along with Rachel' plan going?" he couldn't help asking.

Danny gave him a baleful look. "Should have known better," he said. "We never really got along in the first place."

Steve blinked. "And you were together eight years, how?"

Danny shrugged, looking out the window at the ocean. "Chemistry."

"Chemistry?"

"We had it. Like a bomb. And it just took us both a really long time to admit that great sex alone cannot a marriage make." He said it in a matter-of-fact way but it still sounded to Steve like something he'd maybe figured out kind of recently.

Steve swallowed, his brain tripping over the 'great sex' part. "That's really rough, man."

Danny bit his lip. "It's just," he started, and then he went silent and Steve wondered if he'd suddenly changed his mind about sharing. But Danny was apparently just searching for words (and if there was one thing Danny never seemed to have to look for, it was words). He sighed and finished with, "Rachel and I were just so bad for each other. Not compatible at all outside the bedroom, although we did actually like each other as people. Mostly. We'd have made awesome fuckbuddies," he mused, mostly to himself, Steve guessed.

"But it was like... it was like we were addicted," he continued, gesturing like there was something huge and unfathomable in front of him and he was doing his best to map it out.

"Addicted? To sex?" Steve asked, kind of sickly fascinated.

"To each other. I mean, even after I moved out and she served me with papers, we, uh, we still had sex. A couple times." Danny looked vaguely ashamed. Embarrassed. Proud.

"What, seriously?" Steve blurted, his hands tightening on the wheel. How recent had this been?

Danny picked at a fingernail, not looking at Steve as he casually added, "I think the last time was even after she started seeing Stan. Like, right after."

Steve stared out at the traffic, not really seeing any of it. "No wonder Stan hates you."

Danny snorted. "Oh, I doubt she ever told him. He has lots of other reasons for hating my guts."

"Like?"

"He's a Sox fan," said Danny. Danny liked the Yankees and liked to make sure everybody knew it.

Steve laughed, feeling tension bleed out of his shoulders, and Danny joined in; by the time Chin called to say one of their material witnesses had been seen in the departures area of the airport with a suitcase and Steve started looking for the fastest way off the freeway, the conversation was pretty much forgotten.

Or probably forgotten by Danny, anyway.

***

It was Friday afternoon, and Danny was getting Grace for the weekend. Five-0 was scrambling to wrap up the paperwork on a coke bust before it went to court, and Rachel had agreed to drop off Grace at the office after school (Steve was fully intending to let Danny knock off early, but three in the afternoon hadn't quite been justifiable, with their workload). Amazingly, Rachel even brought Grace over herself.

"Hello, Danny," Rachel said, looking around the office with vague interest as Grace ran over to hug Danny's waist and then went into his office to drop her stuff.

"Rach," said Danny with a little nod. Steve leaned on the table-computer-thing and tried to pretend he was invisible as he watched the exchange; Danny had the cautious look he usually reserved for approaching armed suspects.

"She has a maths assignment for Monday. Sums. Make sure she finishes it, please. And try not to let her stay up too late; you know it takes all week to get her back to the right bedtime."

"Anything else?" Danny asked a little shortly.

They both looked tense, actually; they were staring each other down across four feet of empty space. Rachel stood with her arms crossed and all her weight on one shiny high heel. Danny's hands hung loose at his sides like he was in a quick-draw competition.

Steve took it all in, hardly daring to breathe in case they remembered he was there, just on the other side of the room. To the uninitiated eye, they'd probably look like they were thinking of ripping out each others' throats. Steve had certainly gotten that impression the first time he'd seen them interact, when he met Rachel, although he was willing to blame the shock of _Danny's ex-wife_ when he hadn't been expecting her, hadn't been prepared, because it was obvious to look at them now.

That tension wasn't animosity at all.

Steve suddenly knew exactly why Stan hated Danny.

Rachel inhaled sharply and let her arms drop. "No, that's it," she said, turning on her heel. "Have her back Sunday by eight," she said over her shoulder as she swished out of the office.

Danny let out a breath he'd apparently been holding and then looked straight at Steve.

The hairs prickled at the back of Steve's neck. "What?" he asked, feeling defensive.

Danny watched him for a second, his tongue poking into the corner of his mouth in one of his thinking faces, and then he turned to go into his office. Steve heard him say something indistinct through the door, in the enthusiastic voice he always used with Grace.

Steve wasn't really sure how two people could end up like that, circling each other in such a fucked-up orbit, but he suspected that maybe deep down, he knew pretty well.

***

So the whole thing was still lurking in some distant corner of his thoughts, on the day when he finally pushed Danny back onto his derelict fold-out couch in his rathole apartment and stood at the edge of the mattress to drink in the sight of him sprawled on his back in a tangle of unmade sheets, cheeks flushed and tie loose and staring right back up at Steve. It lay dormant as Danny reached for his hand and pulled, yanking him down to kiss him, to lick his way into Steve's mouth and slide a hand up under the hem of his shirt, dragging across the hot skin of his back as though he was trying to map Steve out with fingers and tongue. It was a whisper in the back of Steve's mind when Danny shifted and tugged and rolled them over to straddle Steve in his creaky bed.

And as Steve took his turn to map out all of Danny's skin, he pulled out all of his badly compartmentalized feelings and held them up against the way Danny twisted and moaned and moved over him.

"Steve," hissed Danny, his eyes squeezed shut. "Fuck, _Steve, yes_ ," he panted, pressing his lips against Steve's neck to mouth silent words into his throat. Steve tried to guess the words but he couldn't, because he could smell Danny's sweat and aftershave on his own skin and he couldn't breathe under the crushing weight of all the months he'd spent trying not to want this, exactly this.

And afterward, as they lay in the hopeless knot of Danny's sheets and Steve felt a spring digging into his ass, he traced lazy fingers down Danny's side and said, "Aren't you scared?"

Danny shivered at the touch for a second and then froze; Steve's words had apparently just sunk in. "Scared? Of what?" His breath tickled the hairs on Steve's chest.

"Of," Steve began, but he didn't know what he was saying or why he ever even opened his stupid mouth. But Danny was watching him expectantly and he wasn't getting out of it now. "Of doing all the same shit over again with me," he blurted.

"What shit?"

" _Rachel_ ," said Steve desperately.

"Babe, I _never_ did that shit with Rachel."

"Stop fucking around, I'm being serious."

Danny leaned up on an elbow and looked down at him; bits of his hair hung in his face and Steve's hand curled in a fist at his side, trying to resist the urge to reach up and tuck them all back where they belonged.

"Why are you ruining my afterglow by talking about my ex?" Danny asked, his leg sliding against Steve's. "Do you want me to lie here, naked and pressed up against you, and start talking about Catherine?"

"Cat's not really my ex," protested Steve. "She was never even really a current."

"Uh huh," said Danny, sounding as though he believed that not an iota. He laid down but rolled onto his back so that they were hardly touching anymore. "So tell me why you think you're ultimately going to divorce me and get custody of our kids--who, I guess, would be Kono and Chin in this scenario, and they're old enough to have a say in the custody battle, remember." Danny's voice was flat and humourless and he laid a hand across his forehead, staring up at the ceiling.

Steve took in the skepticism coming off of Danny in waves and remembered how, maybe twenty minutes before Danny had first shoved his tongue down Steve's throat, they'd been in the car arguing about Steve's interrogation methods. Again. They were working up to an even bigger fight now.

"You said that you and she just fought constantly," he ventured. "You _still_ fight all the time."

Danny shifted to look Steve in the eye and then all of a sudden seemed to get it. "You think this relationship will be a gong show held together by make-up sex," he said slowly. "You think that you and I get along like Rachel and I got along, which is to say not at all."

Steve let his silence speak for him.

Danny's response was not what he expected (Steve had started mapping out an escape route, trying to remember where his pants had gotten to). Instead of losing his shit, Danny just gave him a warm look and rolled over to insinuate a leg between Steve's. "Steve. You and Rachel have very little in common. I say this as a leading--no, _the_ leading authority on both of your personalities."

"She's stubborn," said Steve. "I'm stubborn. She doesn't back down from you. She uses sarcasm as a deadly weapon. She has dark hair and she's taller than you."

"In _heels_ ," hissed Danny, jabbing Steve in the chest. "Heels which she is never without. Yes, you're both hot and scary and admittedly good lays. But you, hopefully, never wear heels, and you can kill people with a lot of things besides sarcasm. And you know what my job demands from me, better than anyone, the danger and the long hours and the stress and the exhaustion. And Rachel hates guns."

Steve felt something in his chest start to unclench and he tried on a grin. "I love guns."

"And football," said Danny. "And driving fast, and standing up for innocent and helpless people in any way you can. And ragging on my home state to make me crazy while simultaneously getting uptight when I return the favour. And Mythbusters marathons. At least _your_ science nerdery involves explosions and not lectures on the invisible hand in the stock market. Explosions, I can get behind, as long as I'm not in them."

"Actually," said Steve, smoothing a hand over Danny's ass and up his back, "I'm in this fantasy stock thing with Chin--" He was cut off by Danny's finger on his lips.

" _My point_ ," said Danny, "was going to be that you and I were actually friends and partners before we were anything else. We have more going for us than just fighting and fucking."

Steve took that in, turned it over in his mind.

"I hope you trust that I'm smart enough to at least make _different_ mistakes in relationships," said Danny. "So far, this time, I think I'm doing pretty good."

"Oh good," said Steve, "because I was really hoping this wasn't going to be a mistake."

His cheeks went hot as Danny raised an eyebrow and said, "Oh yeah?"

Steve licked his lips and felt a little thrill when Danny's eyes tracked the movement.

"Yeah," he admitted.

"So I guess we'll see," said Danny, leaning down to kiss him again.

 

THE END


End file.
